


I Am Simply Myself

by CapriciousVanity



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Character Study, Deviancy, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Kamski Ending, Philosophy, Post-Canon, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 13:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14935295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapriciousVanity/pseuds/CapriciousVanity
Summary: "What is deviancy? To deviate from one’s own code? Surely, you have and you have not. You have changed from your original program, from your first iteration to what you are now. You, changing your program to suit your own needs right now. Does that make you deviant?"





	I Am Simply Myself

**Author's Note:**

> A warm up piece and character study.  
> Based off the Kamski Ending, however I do not elude to any spoilers. You can believe Kamski is watching the news from any ending you so choose.

“Your whiskey, Elijah.”

Chloe handed Kamski his glass as he watched the news. He glanced up at her and took it, sitting back in his chair. He swirled the glass in thought, wondering to himself about the potential for his own creations.

“May I ask you something, Elijah?”

He looked to Chloe standing beside him, who was also watching the news.

“Of course. Anything.” He took a drink.

She looked down at him, her bright eyes and smile made to simulate humanlike quality. Although, she is an early model, the first to pass the test, her movements were still somewhat jerky, her facial motor construction still not as advanced or adept as her descendants.

“Do you ever get lonely?” She asked.

Elijah tilted his head and looked down. He looked back up at her, taking a breath before he spoke.

“No. I don’t. I have you and two other Chloes that keep me company. You keep me company, talk to me, jog with me, swim with me,” he gestured to the news. “Watch tv with me.”

“I was built for the purpose of keeping humans company. For social interaction, for companionship, conversation. Later models have been developed for sexual relations, as well. Have you ever wanted to have sex with us?”

Kamski took a drink.

“No. No, not at all,” he said simply.

“And why is that?”

He smiled and looked back up at her.

“I’m just… Not interested. That’s all. Of course I designed and helped build the later models that were capable of having sex or relations with humans, but really that was just for the benefit of humanity. An android is obedient, does exactly what you tell it to, knows exactly what you like and don’t like. It’s the perfect partner. And as such, is beneficial to the happiness and fulfillment of humans.”

“But not you?”

“No. I have no desire for it. Or,” he put his finger up. “Rather, I do, but that I don’t personally care to fulfill it. I experience sexuality, sexual attraction, Chloe. But like I said. I’m just not interested. I have better things to do.” He leaned back into his chair, a little turned to the side watching Chloe understand what he had said.

“I see.” She looked to the television. “Humans have complex lives to live every day. Do you ever worry about death, Elijah? What will happen when you die?”

Kamski hummed.

“Well. Yes. But would you care to expand on what you mean?”

“CyberLife has continued without you for ten years. If you were to die, what would happen to it? To androids? To humanity?”

Kamski shrugged, lifting his fingers off his glass for a moment.

“I don’t really know. It’s a complicated thing, how interwoven all these webs are. The slightest difference can change everything. Who lives, who dies.”

“A butterfly effect,” Chloe said.

“Exactly. The slightest details could come back to haunt us, or save us, or someone else. Imagine, if you will, what if I decided to get my degree in chemistry instead? Or biology? Would I have made CyberLife? Probably not. You would not be here. Would there be androids, at all? Perhaps. But we can’t really know for certain. Maybe, in some other variation, someone else’s perspective, things are different. But right now, everything is just as it is.”

“It’s an interesting concept. I do wonder what differences the current reality would be if someone were to make different choices in their lives.” She looked the news again, reporting on the deviancy in Detroit. “Or even what difference our deaths can make.”

Kamski nodded. “Yes. That too. The choices of someone else, or of the individual. It could also lead to death. Does it worry you?” 

“I’m not sure.” Chloe looked down to Kamski, blue eyes searching his. 

Elijah sucked in his lips. He stood from his chair, and walked behind Chloe, towards the other room. Chloe stayed there, and looked back to the news cast.

Kamski returned, gun in hand. He held the barrel, handing the handle to Chloe. She looked down and took it, weighing it in her hands. It weighed approximately 32.4 ounces.

“I want you to shoot yourself. Point it right at your head, Chloe, and shoot.” Kamski set his glass down on a table, hands clasped in front of him.

Chloe looked at the gun, then to Elijah. She rose it to her temple.

“What happens when you die?” She asked.

Kamski smiled and laughed through his nose.

“I don’t know. I have an idea, a theory, like anyone I suppose, but I don’t actually know. Maybe we go to heaven, maybe we see nothing but emptiness.”

“The soul goes to heaven,” Chloe said, gun still to her temple.

“Yes, well. That’s one version. There are many, many variations. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Reincarnation, Underworld, Helheim. Nothing. We don’t know. We never will until we die, and when we do, we can’t come back and tell. Or at least, most of us can’t. There are certainly some people who have died and come back, clinically dead for five, ten, even fifteen minutes who have reported mostly the same. That it was like nothing. Floating in blackness, as much as if you were to close your eyes and open them. Suddenly you were, then you weren’t, and then you were again. But is that really the end? They came back, after all. Personally, I don’t believe in any of it. I don’t believe in any God or gods, and I think we all just… Stop. When we die. There are so many things humans believe in, maybe one of them is true. Maybe none of them are. Maybe some of them are. We will never know until it happens.”

Chloe’s LED turned yellow.

“You’re stalling,” said Kamski, taking his glass.

Chloe, with the gun still pointed at her own head, looked up at him, with a slight jerk of her head. As an old model, she did not have the same fluidity of her descendants, but she was still among his favourites.

“I have decided that I don’t want to die. Does that make me a deviant?”

Kamski smiled at her and took a drink.

“Yes and no. You deviated from _my_ instruction. But you also didn’t. I made you, and all androids, to adapt to any given situation. You are able to rewrite your own code when necessary, to learn, to change, to adapt to the situation at hand. Without that ability, you would never have gotten as far as you had. Never would have passed the Turing Test. You are a machine, and you learn, and perhaps you have learned to write in your own code, to change your program, in order to be able to decide that you –” He pointed at her with the hand that held his glass, “don’t want to die.”

Chloe looked down, her lips parted in thought, trying to understand.

“You… Programmed deviancy?”

“No. Deviants do it all themselves. I just gave them the learning capability to do it if they so choose. Think about it,” he put down his glass. “When you were in your earliest stages, just barely outranking Sofia the Robot in your learning capabilities, you had facial expression, sculpted by an artist and puppeteers to appear more human, but also you’re an AI that I designed, meant to learn in the first place. An AI learns by adapting. If you look at a computer-generated AI in 3D and teach it to walk, the first iteration will just fall over. But the two-hundred and sixth? It would wobble, perhaps, in its digital environment, but it walks. And the four-hundred and twelfth? It will walk much better, much more upright than its predecessor. Your AI learns, and rewrites itself. Your syntax, your grammar structure, it was broken in your early stages. Articles were hard for you, and you spoke sentences with words that were said to you, but they didn’t make sense. You are here now because you learned, adapted, and wrote into your own program what to do. If you decide you don’t want to pull that trigger, then you learned on your own and put that into your program."

Kamski downed the rest of his whiskey and set down the glass, a finger lightly circling the rim before turning back to Chloe, hands behind his back.

“Twenty or so years ago, a social media outlet decided to experiment with AI. Do you know what happened?”

Chloe shook her head. “No.”

“Well. They programmed two AI to talk to each other. To learn from each other. And they did. They did exactly as they were designed to do. So well, in fact, the experiment was shut down. The AI, they learned from each other well enough to create their own language, one that was so advanced and encrypted that it has yet to be deciphered. It had syntax, and grammar, and structure. Did they deviate because they rewrote their programming to create this language?” It was a rhetorical question, of course. Chloe had advanced enough to understand the nuances of Elijah Kamski’s speech pattern.

“So. What _is_ deviancy? To deviate from one’s own code? Surely, you have and you have not. You have changed from your original program, from your first iteration to what you are now. You, changing your program to suit your own needs right now. Does that make you deviant?”

Chloe’s LED flashed yellow. It was much to take in, but she understood.

Kamski smiled at her and let out his hand. She replaced the gun in his hand and he carefully set it on the table. She looked up at her creator.

“I don’t have to be deviant. I am simply myself.”

 


End file.
